If Your Kid Needs Medicine, You Find the Dough

I just finished a movie that makes me scratch my head and say…what the heck? I do love digging into the deep, deep long tail that Netflix has to offer, but sometimes I pull up a dud..as Cindy often loves to remind me.

This film is called “Explicit Ills,” and was written and directed by Mark Webber. It follows five separate stories all in the South Philadelphia ghetto. We have a young guy on a bike who sells weed; we have a health nut black guy who wants to convince a rich white woman to get his colonics and lend him money to open a store; we’ve got the sad little 9-year old who is beaten up by a bad older boy at school and charms him by handing him a new pair of Nikes in his size.

But then we have the wife of the health nut, who rolls up a giant spliff into a cigar wrapper and tokes deeply before teaching a yoga class. She explains to her youngster that to her, the weed is like a religion, and it helps her to get into the mood to deeply enjoy yoga. But he shouldn’t smoke it, no way. He said he doesn’t want to anyway.

Another scene involving weed has a dainty white girl slamming down a bong hit and then realizing she has to go to work at a law firm, and ‘is really stoned.’ She stumbles out of the ghetto and into the financial district buzz in tow.

But at the end, I found the film’s message frustrating. A woman whose son has an asthma attack is hospitalized (for free) and then she is told at the pharmacy that the drugs cost $52, unless she has insurance. She curses the CVS clerk, and leaves the store empty handed. The poor kid dies the next morning…but Jesus, I mean who wouldn’t go out and get that $52 to just pay for the medicine? Instead she blames ‘the system’ and we’re all supposed to cheer on the marchers who later declare they all want health care. Now.

Hey I want health care too, but I pay for it and the least she could have done was to fork over the dough and save her beloved son’s life.